The hypocrisy of gun control

It’s stories such as this that make me increasingly cynical about political statements made by police associations and especially those from Police Chiefs, wherever they may be located.

Charles Ramsey, while Chief of Police for Washington DC, was a staunch supporter of the DC handgun ban. Now, no longer DC’s police chief and on his way to Philadelphia where citizens have the right to concealed carry, Ramsey has decided that DC’s ban is not (never has been?) necessary.

Philly gun owners will be excited to know that Ramsey does support registration as a way to control handguns as well as believing that ‘more dangerous’ guns should be banned. But the actual ban in DC that he strongly defended is no longer his issue. Which must be a bit annoying to the new DC police chief whose job is to continue to support the ban and tell the media how the world will come to an end if the Supreme Court validates the constitutional right of DC residents to own handguns.

[Off the subject, someone needs to explain to me what makes a gun ‘more dangerous’. Unfortunately too often the common take is simply the gun’s appearance.

The story in Canada is that when the federal bureaucrats came to decide what guns would be listed as prohibited under their new Firearms Act they simply went to a book like the Gun Digest and picked out those that they thought people shouldn’t own – mostly military style semi-auto rifles (don’t get me started on 4 inch barrel handguns). ]

But back to Chief Ramsey and police chiefs and other gun control spokespersons in general.

I have only had direct knowledge of a couple of police chiefs in my life, and never thought that they were the brightest puppies in the pack. Much of the media pronouncements I have heard from various chiefs over the years has often made me wonder if they were in fact the norm. They may (or may not) be competent at running their own departments but they should be kept far away from policy making for a city and certainly for a country as they continually attempt to do in Canada.

As noted by others, if you had police making the rules, every citizen would have their fingerprint and DNA samples on file, we would all be carrying official ID and police would have the right to stop you on the street for an identification check at their pleasure. And don’t think for a minute that there aren’t a lot of police out there right now who would not see that as unreasonable, all in the name of crime control of course.

Regardless, it was a surprise, that Julian Fantino when he was Toronto’s police chief spoke out against the value of the long-gun registry in Canada. It is rare to see someone in that position take a stance other than the official one of his political organization – in this case the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs.

But it does make me wonder how many of the high profile Canadian anti-gun people, such as the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, activist Wendy Cuckier, Ontario Premier McGuinty and Toronto Mayor Miller to name just a few, really believe that they can reduce crime and violence through the registration of firearms or the more radical step of banning them completely. I think more likely they all have their own agendas and guns, gun ownership and gun owners are just convenient whipping boys that enable them to get media attention and to sound as though they are proposing real solutions when in actuality they have no real solutions to give.